A large number of datacenters go through one or more types of power-based consolidation/transformation efforts to reduce energy costs. A large fraction of a datacenter's energy cost is from servers. Existing approaches, however, only look at reducing power or reducing cooling costs. Piecemeal solutions at any one level may violate constraints at other levels. For example, satisfying the power budget by consolidating virtual machines (VMs) on a server may violate the cooling capacity at a rack and create hotspots in the datacenter.
Drawbacks exist in considering only power costs. For example, impractical solutions that violate the cooling constraints can lead to damage of equipment by creation of hotspots, inefficient cooling, a high energy bill, etc. Drawbacks also exist in considering only cooling costs, such as, for example, selection of power inefficient servers, a high energy bill, etc. As a result, an integrated solution is needed for capturing different kinds of power and cooling related constraints and objectives that appear in consolidation/transformation endeavors.